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Friday, 3 March 2017

Book review – Doctor on the Ball

If
you want an amusing gloriously politically incorrect comic novel, you could
do a lot worse than read one of Dr Richard Gordon’s doctor series of books.

Gordon
Ostlere was born in 1921, so he was sixty-four when he wrote his penultimate
Doctor novel, Doctor on the Ball
(1985).He left the medical profession
to concentrate on writing in 1952 and has produced many novels, screenplays as
well as non-fiction. He’s now 95.

When
we encounter his fictional doctor Gordon in this tome, he has been a GP in the
market town of Churchford, Kent for twenty-five years and is probably ready for
retirement and spending his time trying to catch fish. His first person
narrative, delivered tongue in cheek, relates several hilarious or touching
medical cases.

Mr
Farthingale, the shop steward at the General hospital is one of his regulars.
He was ‘shop steward for the Association of Confederated Health Employees
(ACHE), whose complicated disagreement with his rival shop stewards for General
Ancillary Services Personnel (GASP) and the Organisation for Unqualified
Cooperatives in Health (OUCH) over deploying the new electrical floor cleaners
had earlier kept the General’s brand-new Elizabeth Wing empty and idle for
months.’ (pp80-81) It transpires that Farthingale has stolen a new bodyscanner
– it’s in his front room at home, and now he wants to return it, without being
caught…

This
is not so unusual, as we all know. The parlous state of the hospital system is
perhaps not helped by misappropriation of commodities: ‘Is there much thieving
at the hospital?’ He guffawed. ‘You must be joking. Don’t you know, the
National Health Service is Britain’s Sin City? Makes Chicago look like
Lourdes.’ Items stolen include X-ray films for the silver, oxygen cylinders for
the steel, for example, he relates.

Gordon’s
targets are not only the NHS management, either. ‘The Foreign Office is for
ever leaving top secret papers in bistros, the Army litters Dorset with
unexploded shells, and the Exchequer loses millions of quid every time it tries
to add up.’ (p90)

In
the doctor’s rare spare time, he grows things: ‘In June the greenhouse became
as rewarding as the end of a multiple pregnancy, cucumbers dangling as plump as
green salami, aubergines as burstingly purple as nasty bruises, tomatoes
pressing against the panes like commuters crammed into rush-hour trains.’ (p93)
Unfortunately, it’s been a bumper year and he has too many tomatoes, and his
wife Sandra has to be very inventive to use them all (which raises a chuckle or
two).

The
good doctor doesn’t like the women’s liberation movement or lawyers; concerning the latter, he says, ‘Perhaps
because they are trained to be nasty to people and we are trained to be nice to
people. And doctors are spared from growing pompous. We have to look up too
many fundamental orifices.’ (p98)

There
are plenty of amusing one-liners, too: ‘I’m a pathologist. All my patients have
to be dead first.’ (p100).

And
bearing in mind this was published in 1985, times haven’t changed much:
‘Everyone knows the NHS is tighter for cash than the Church of England.’ (p151)

Inevitably,
many asides on once current personalities are no longer relevant – whether
that’s mentioning politicians, TV personalities or sports people.

I
imagine there will be a few PC individuals who could finds these books
offensive; if you can’t appreciate a joke, then please leave the human race.

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About Me

Nik Morton also writes as Ross Morton and a few other names besides... Ex Royal Navy, Ex IT, Expat living in Spain. Editor and writer. I write short stories, articles and novels. I also draw cartoons and illustrate comics and stories and magazine covers. To date I have 21 books published or soon-to-be published... I'm married to Jennifer, a linguist and musician who also writes. We have a daughter Hannah, son-in-law Farhad (Harry) a grandson Darius and a granddaughter Suri - who live in Spain too.